.
The "Pro Football Hall of Fame" in Canton,
Ohio, supposedly represents all of Professional
Football. Yet, of its two hundred and
thirty-plus members,
only ONE was never in the NFL. That one, Buffalo's Billy Shaw,
played his entire career in the AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE. Yet, at
his induction, he wore a yellow coat emblazoned with the NFL
logo..
Great players like Tom Sestak, Lionel Taylor,
Johnny Robinson, Abner Haynes, and numerous other American Football
League stars have been ignored by the "Pro Football Hall of Fame", we
believe, because they played in the wrong
league..

This, then, is a Hall of Fame devoted to the
players of a league that had a profound impact on Professional
Football; a sport that today reflects the
AFL's influence in everything but name. The
American Football League is now widely acknowledged as the
genesis of modern Professional Football.

Our Hall of Fame list of American Football
League players, coaches, and contributors includes those who, against
tremendous odds, got into the "Pro Football Hall of Fame".

But it also includes (with names in BLUE) the
AFL stars who until now, have not received the honor they so richly
deserve. We also include
men whose lives (and deaths) after their AFL careers warrant
their induction to the AFL Hall of Fame. Names in RED
represent those who were in the
AFL HALL
OF FAME BEFORE
they were selected to the other hall of fame.

My criteria for admission to the AFL Hall are mainly subjective.
Go to the bottom of this page for details.

The American Football League Hall of Fameexists only in my mind, and
can be visited only in the cyberspace of the Internet. But
unlike
other halls of fame, this one is open every
day of the year. Archives of the AFL Hall of Fame do
physically exist, and AFL fans may request copies of photos, articles,
etc. by e-mailing
RemembertheAFL@aol.com

To the AFL greats honored here, and to
ALL
American Football League players, your fans extend a resounding "Well
done!!!"

What qualifies a person to be in the American Football League Hall of
Fame? Since it's my Hall of Fame, I set the criteria
when I began my Remember the AFL website in 2001.
The criteria are admittedly very subjective.
I have been a fan of the AFL since its inception in 1960. I
agonized over the unfair press the league and its players received from
the likes of Tex Maule of SI, Jerry
Green of the Detroit Free Press, Pat Summerall and the other NFL
shills on CBS-TV, and last, but not least, from the pompous other
league itself. I shuddered at the losses by AFL teams in the first
two AFL-NFL World Championship Games, and then I reveled in the
victories of the Jets and the Chiefs over two successive teams labeled
"the best in NFL history".
What defines greatness? It's an ineluctable
quality best defined by "You know it when you see it." In
this case, my memory was the "selector". If I could
remember a player's on-field excellence forty years after he performed,
and in spite of the dearth of "press" he received during and after
his AFL career, that makes him a Hall-of-Famer to me.
So, to put it simply, the men in this list are men who
I think belong in a Hall of Fame, based on my first-hand knowledge of
their prowess during the years 1960 through 1969. I'm open to
comments by others, and have periodically added names submitted by
others, if I agreed with their assessments. I by no means suggest
that ALL of these players belong in that other
hall of fame. But look at their names, and their feats, and try to
tell me WHY MANY MORE are not in it.
I have also included men who are identified with the AFL, but
who have been inducted to the Pro
Football Hall of Fame. Most of these (excepting
Billy Shaw) also spent time in the other
league, and in some cases (Paul Brown,
Curley Culp, etc.) I
include them in the AFL Hall of Fame only because of that other honor.
Culp, for example, played only two years in the AFL, winning a World
Championship with the Chiefs, but was not on my original list of AFL
Hall-of-Famers. Somehow selectors for the Pro Football Hall of
Fame believe that because Culp spent most of his career in the other
league, his qualifications are better than those of his teammates like
Johnny Robinson or
Jim Tyrer.
I believe that the snubbing of Robinson and Tyrer, as well as
other AFL greats, will never be corrected by the Pro Football Hall of
Fame selectors, since those selectors are continually replaced by
younger men who have no concept of the quality of play in the league
that was the genesis of modern Professional Football. They simply
don't REMEMBER theAFL.